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[Primer] Selenia, My Guardian Angel - High Power

Commander / EDH Combo Lifegain Necropotence Primer Suicide Black WB (Orzhov)

C7rimReaper


Sideboard


An Intro to Our Angel

Selenia, Dark Angel can make for an unassuming commander herself, that has the capability to win on a whim with just the help of some support cards. A combo deck with a heavy life-altering focus, let's take a deep look into Selenia, Dark Angel.

If you're a fan of high risk/ high reward decks, surprise explosive combos, playing primarily enchantments to interact, and perhaps not afraid to play a bit of stax*, then read on! You're among friends here!

However, if you like playing lots of creatures, attacking/defending primarily, enjoy the combat step, prefer reactive interaction, then I wouldn't expect this to be the kind of deck you'd enjoy playing- which is fine! However if you play against a deck similar to this one regularly, go ahead and skip down to the checks and counters section so you can better prepare yourself for future matches!

*(Stax is something that could be worked out of the deck, though personally, I think it's a great way to level the playing fields when playing a near creatureless deck such as this. If that's not your thing though, you could easily replace the stax packages with recursion or extra draw. I just wont guarantee a similar level of performance. At the end of the day, you do you, and play what you think is fun!)

Our main win condition of the deck falls into setting up a way to draw our deck with Ad Nauseam without killing ourselves using either Angel's Grace (to enable not being able to lose on our combo turn), Soul Echo or Phyrexian Unlife (to enable surviving past zero life), or Teferi's Protection (for unchanging life). After we have our deck in hand, all that's left is to finish off our opponents.

We have a few different lines at our disposal to win. Firstly, we'll dump any fast mana can onto the board, and if we end up coming short of what we need, we should have Rain of Filth to compensate. After that, we can finish with any of the following:

Sickening Dreams Show

Exsanguinate Show

Repay in Kind Show

With all of these finishers, setting up some insurance is always preferable when at all possible. Whether we do so with Silence, Grand Abolisher, were able to use Boseiju, Who Shelters All, or simply hold up the mana for Lapse of Certainty - insurance is always going to lead to more victories then not.

As in this list, since we don't run any recursion, we run different side combos that synergize with our overall themes. That way, if we fail at drawing our deck, we're not down for the count. These combos include:

Exquisite Blood + Sanguine Bond/Vizkopa Guildmage's ability + Lifegain/Opponent Dmg = Infinite Lifegain/Opponent Dmg

Lethal Vapors + Teferi's Protection = Protection from everything + Unchanging life for unbounded turns

Phyrexian Unlife/Soul Echo to survive at zero life + Selenia, Dark Angel/Hex Parasite/Toxic Deluge/Necropotence to drop our health to zero + Repay in Kind = All opponent's life is dropped to zero

While these little numbers aren't the greatest ways to achieve ourselves a victory, they will still be avaliable to us in the event we are able to go for them in a game.

I've included a sideboard of sorts to take the slots of the higher power cards in the list, and replace them with lower powered alternatives to accomplish an overall much slower and more telegraphed combo deck. Obviously, this powered down version of the deck is still on theme with our strategy, though instead of trying to accomplish an Ad Naus combo, or Blood-bond combo- the strategy revolves around sinking our life into cards such as Selenia, Dark Angel, Wall of Blood, Hex Parasite, etc. and simply switching life totals with our opponents using Axis of Mortality/Soul Conduit. A Repay in Kind + Soul Echo/Phyrexian Unlife combo is still in place as well, because at upwards of 10 mana plus the mana for a life sink, I personally don't feel it's unfair that it's not as telegraphed, even in a lower powered playgroup.

Card Choices, Descriptions, and Interactions

  • Dark Tutelage & Phyrexian Arena: These serve as our incremental draw, while not as potent as some of our other draw spells, they can still draw us many cards throughout a game if dropped early and left unchecked. It's worth noting that we run Dark Tutelage over it's creature counterpart Dark Confidant simply because we want to limit the creatures in our deck as best as we can, because of the creature hate we end up running would likely end up killing him.
  • Foreboding Fruit, Night's Whisper, Read the Bones, Sign in Blood, & Skeletal Scrying: All burst draw spells that function well. Read the Bones probably being the best, usually seeing the most cards. Skeletal Scrying is a special case, where it has a low floor and a high ceiling where at it's worst we have out graveyard exiled and can't draw anything, but at it's best we can draw as any cards as we have mana available.
  • Necrologia & Necropotence: Our mass draw spells. When used with spells that can return the life points we sink into them, such as Children of Korlis, Tainted Sigil, or Oketra's Last Mercy we can draw a massive amount of our library and ideally assemble a win.
  • Scroll Rack: Not technically draw, and not card advantage either- but a valuable tool to dig further into our deck. When used with shuffle effects from fetchlands and tutors we can pitch what we don't need back into our deck and start to get new draws entirely.

Tutors Show

Removal that we play before the threat is introduced, in sense slowing down our opponent so we can get ahead. In the list we run a number of cards that hate on creatures because we won't be playing many of those ourselves- allowing us to break parody. While we don't expect these cards to stick around for long on the board, the fact that our opponents will want to get rid of them means there will be less removal they'll have access to when we play out other enchantments our win relies on such as Phyrexian Unlife or Soul Echo.
  • Praetor's Grasp: As mentioned before, we can proactively remove future threats from our opponents libraries.
  • Lethal Vapors: Slows down aggro decks, making them think twice about casting their creatures. There is of course Lethal Vapors second line of text, which allows anyone to destroy it, however at the cost of their next turn. Someone is bound to destroy it not too long after we play it out, but slowing an opponent down by a turn can be worth it in itself. On top of all that, Lethal Vapors and Teferi's Protection when used together allow us to attain unchanging life and protection from everything for unbounded turns by stacking Lethal Vapor triggers in response to Teferi's Protection. Against many decks, this will result in our win, because 1,000,000 turns later our opponents will long have decked themselves out.
  • Pestilence: A wonderful recycling board wipe, and a perfect answer to little mana dorks and small tokens. We'll keep the creature with the highest toughness alive to keep Pestilence around as long as possible.
  • Tainted AEther: Similar in vein to Lethal Vapors, but will usually stick around longer. Stops infinite token strategies.
  • No Mercy: Will not protect us from a game ending attack, but will stop players from attacking us almost altogether for the majority of the game if it sticks around on the board.
  • Spreading Plague: I view this in a similar fashion to Pestilence, it will stick around for as long as it can, but is a must remove for any opponent playing a decent amount of creatures in their deck. As well, it enables one opponent to effectively boardwipe another.
Apart from creature hate pieces, we also run grave hate to stop graveyard decks- as we break parody on them as well by not having any recursion ourselves.
  • Rest in Peace: Classic grave wipe for all players, and then continues it's effect replacing cards even hitting the grave with having them go directly to exile. Amazing effect, and for only two mana it can come down at any time in the game and have a lasting impact.
  • Planar Void: Underrated masterpiece of a card. While it does not have the replacement effect like Rest in Peace, or outright exile graves on entering the battlefield, for one mana this card throws a massive wrench into recursion decks plans simply by being on the board. It will have to be dealt with normally with around three mana by our opponent, making it a mana positive transaction for us. While it's fancier counterpart Leyline of the Void can come in for free (and has the replacement effect), the Leyline will cost us 4 mana in 90% of our games, which could've been a turn where we double spelled playing Planar Void and something else.
  • Shred Memory
  • Bojuka Bog
  • Scavenger Grounds
Reactive removal comes in a few different forms. Boardwipes and targeted removal being the most common.

Boardwipes Show

Targeted Removal Show

Another form of reactive removal, but mostly focused on removal of opponents spells targeting our permenants and/or spells on the stack.
  • Boseiju, Who Shelters All: Makes our instants and sorceries uncounterable.
  • Faith's Shield: Protects us when we're hovering at a negative life total, only being kept alive by Phyrexian Unlife or Soul Echo.
  • Grand Abolisher: Guarantees our combo turn to go off without a hitch.
  • Silence: Also guarantees a safe combo turn, and can stop an opponent from comboing off on their turn if we see it coming.
  • Lapse of Certainty: Maybe the best counterspell we have access to in our colors. It only delays their spell by their next draw, but we can still protect our combo decently well. There exists another counterspell of sorts we can slot in here depending on our preference called Imp's Mischief, but Imp's Mischief is able to whiff in some situations.
  • Teferi's Protection: One of the most versatile cards in our deck. It can be used to protect our permanents, to allow us to draw our deck with Ad Nauseam, combos with Lethal Vapors, and saves us from an opponents attempt to take the game on their turn.
Apart from everything already touched on, we want to run a package of spells that weave everything together with a life manipulation strategy, giving us a way to abuse the interactions between them and our life total.
  • Children of Korlis, Tainted Sigil, & Oketra's Last Mercy: All ways to attain maximum value off of Necropotence or Necrologia, not to mention also simply being able to stall us a few more turns as we assemble our combo.
  • Exquisite Blood, Sanguine Bond, & Vizkopa Guildmage: When combined with each other create a situation where if we gain life, or opponents lose life, they will infinitely trigger each other. However, even without the two of them, a lot of value can be reaped from having only one. Exquisite Blood will more often then not gradually gain us life over a game, though keen opponents will try to aggro to us a bit more while it's in play. Sanguine Bond can also team with any of the above lifegain spells and a life sink to nuke a single opponents life total.
  • Selenia, Dark Angel, Hex Parasite, Toxic Deluge, & Necropotence: All excellent life sinks, ways to plummet our life total to nearly nothing (or in combination with Phyrexian Unlife or Soul Echo, literally nothing) to push what we can do with life matters cards to the limit.

Checks and Counters Show

I am always keeping my eyes peeled for potential changes to the list- so stay tuned for updates as I experiment over time! :^) Thanks for stopping by, leave me an upvote or some feedback, I'd be happy to receive either~ +1 Upvote

Suggestions

Updates Add

With Commander Legends at our door, now seemed like the perfect time to revise some of slots in the deck I felt were under-preforming in games.

On top of a few cards not pulling their weight, I thought it best to look towards the future of the format a bit. With new cards on their way such as Opposition Agent, and Jeweled Lotus I have a suspicion that as a whole, people will find greater success in their games by running more instant speed removal for commanders dropped crazy early, or just other generic threats. All this being said, here are the changes I deemed fit to make:

Pithing Needle to Path to Exile: Both are targeted removal on 1 cmc, but I see Path being useful far more then Pithing Needle in the future.

Cleansing Nova to Austere Command: Sometimes I've wanted to destroy artifacts without having to destroy my enchantments alongside them in games. I feel like the selectable modes are well worth the extra 1 mana to cast.

Axis of Mortality to Spreading Plague: Axis was always too high cmc to normally matter, especially having to wait a turn cycle for any sort of payoff. Obviously, this sort of effect is the soul of the deck, so Axis will be heading to the sideboard. In it's place we have another way to slow down aggro and creature decks, and perhaps a way to enable multiple creature wipes for 5 mana.

Vedalken Orrery to No Mercy: On paper, V. Orrery is great. Enables instant speed wins, and 'flashing' out some of the meatier enchantments in the deck, but I found that V. Orrery on curve feels like a big tempo loss. I don't dislike the Orrery, and there are games it's been very solid, but I feel like 4 mana could be better spent doing something else- like keeping creatures off you with No Mercy.

Emergence Zone to Wasteland: Similar to V. Orrery, though in a more extreme case. I can count the times Emergence Zone has helped win a game on one hand, and to count the times Ive watched Gaea's Cradle come down and steamroll the table I would need fare more then my own digits. This one is just a no brainer.

Painful Lesson to Foreboding Fruit: This is pretty funny to me, it's just Painful Lesson with a pear slices on the side. Strictly better card so why not run it.

So here we go, a good chunk of changes. Hoping to see a little more consistency with staxing creatures, and having opponents remove the stax cards earlier so our combo wins that rely on Phyrexian Unlife or Soul Echo are a bit more safe later on in games. As well, I'm interested to see what Commander Legends will bring to the table in the manner of format staples.

One last note for the update is I managed to get a couple foils more foils that were on the buylist: I'm happy to add Eventide's Fetid Heath and the 2001 FNM Swords to the collection.

Comments

Date added 5 years
Last updated 3 years
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

1 - 2 Mythic Rares

55 - 8 Rares

21 - 3 Uncommons

12 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.53
Tokens Elephant 3-3 G, Food
Folders Other Decks
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